Reporters must stand trial over massacre story
MYANMAR - Two journalists arrested while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims will face trial in Myanmar after a court rejected a motion to drop the case against them.
Reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were detained in December and accused of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act for possessing material relating to security operations in Rakhine state that was handed to them by the police. Myanmar has faced global condemnation and accusations of extrajudicial killings, ethnic cleansing and genocide as about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled Rakhine for Bangladesh after a military crackdown on insurgents. The government rejects the allegations and says it was defending itself against attacks from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army that took place in August. The two reporters have been held in Insein prison in Yangon since their arrest while facing hearings to determine whether the case will go to trial, with 17 out of 25 witnesses having given testimony. Their lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case last week, citing in part troubling discrepancies in witness statements, but the motion was swiftly rejected in a Yangon courtroom packed with supporters, family and media.
“The court decided that the proposal from the defendants’ lawyer to release the defendants before all the witnesses were cross-examined has been rejected,” the judge, Ye Lwin, said. The pair had been investigating a massacre of 10 Rohingya men on 2 September in the Rakhine village of Inn Din that was carried out by security forces and local residents. The military admitted the atrocity took place and Reuters later published the story while the reporters were in prison. In a rare punishment in a country where the military has long operated with impunity, seven soldiers were sentenced to jail with hard labour for their part in the killings on Tuesday.
(The Guardian)